Located on the Isle of Terror in Lake Encarthan, Xin-Grafar — the city of Golden Death — is the fabled vault-city of the Whispering Tyrant Tar-Baphon. Legend to hold more wealth than all of Avistan combined, the treasure-city has been sought after by adventurers and explorers for centuries.

History

Thousands of years ago, settlers from the Uomoto Valley set out across Golarion to discover the world. One group of settlers, led by Kwaba Ajun-Ketogen traveled across much of Avistan collecting a wealth of knowledge and magical power from long lost Thassilonian ruins. After forty-seven years of exploration, Kwaba and his people finally settled upon a pristine island at the center of Lake Encarthan. Here, deep below the ground, Kwaba discovered an immense cave of spiritual significance, containing a locus-point of elemental energy he would set his people to studying. Using magic retained from their Shory ancestors, the Uomoto settlers began researching the earth elemental nexus contained in this cavern, eventually using the power of the nexus to create a majestic, subterranean city called Kestrillon.

For two hundred and seventy three years the city of Kestrillon traded with the neighboring nations of Lake Encarthan, spreading knowledge and arcane insights to the peoples still recovering from the Age of Darkness. Ultimately, Kestrillon fell to the power of the Whispering Tyrant on his rise to power when he claimed the island at the heart of Kortos as a seat of his power. The people of Kestrillon were slain and their nexus used to conjure imeasureable wealth from the elemental plane of earth in order to satiate Tar-Baphon's insane lust for power. Renaming the city Xin-Grafar (taking the name of Kestrillon's destroyed Grafar Cathedral) in ancient Thassilonian style, Tar-Baphon styled himself a sovereign like the Runelords of old.

Using his vast necromantic powers combined with the nexus, Tar-Baphon rose the dead of Kestrillon and plated them in solid gold, reanimating them to serve as eternal guardians for his greatest treasures.